Friday, September 29, 2000
Theater review
Shelterhouse 'Shakespeare's R&J' a disappointment saved by The Bard
By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It's obvious what's supposed to be happening in Shakespeare's R&J, Shelterhouse season opener at Playhouse in the Park.
A quartet of Catholic school boys should be finding freedom from their oppressive, repressive regimen by acting out the glorious, spirit-freeing text of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. (In R&J they read it in secret, like a dirty book.)
One boy in particular should be embarking on a journey of self-discovery and perhaps even a subtle sexual awakening.
It would make for good theater if any of that actually happened, but it doesn't in a largely disappointing evening which is saved by the Bard in the end.
Interestingly, on opening night a noticeable portion of the audience departed at intermission — interesting because it's my guess that the people who left were polarized in their response to R&J.
For some of them no doubt it was too much, for others it was too little.
R&J was a long-run sensation off-Broadway as three adolescents are lured away from their prayers and boyish rough-housing by their friend (Christopher Baker, who will play Romeo). He persuades them to skip a school period, slip into what set designer Ursula Belden's minimal flourishes suggest is an empty chapel, and play out Romeo & Juliet.
The conceit is that the other three guys can't act. I assure you that with no subtext, no apparent inner journeying, no tension sexual or otherwise and lots of short cuts taken through the script to fit the high points of Romeo & Juliet into R&J's high concept, the first act is more convoluted than this sentence.
Student #2's wet blanket of a Juliet is an insult to both Juliet and passionate girlhood, but that's not to say it isn't exactly how a schoolboy would view the character then perform it painfully. But all that intellectualizing about Liam Christopher O'Brien's performance makes you want to reach for an aspirin bottle.
Under Alan Bailey's direction, Mr. Baker and Mr. O'Brien are the most passionless of passionate young lovers. Their clinches will either disturb you or bore you, depending on your personal politics. What they won't do is involve you.
Enlarging the problem is that adapter Joe Calarco purposely bleeds his source material of much of its youthful joy — he has points to make about entrapment (for characters young and old) — but Mr. Bailey doesn't bravely follow where Mr. Calarco leads. The production's lack of tension and absence of dangerous edge works against R&J's intentions for too long.
But while all those people were leaving during intermission, a miracle was occurring off-stage. When Mr. O'Brien returns in the second act Juliet is in his bones. If only the audience had been treated in act one to tiny flashes suggesting the transformation to come.
Midway through R&J's second act, as the boys lose themselves (and supposedly, if at least momentarily, find and free themselves in their roles) the action melds into Romeo & Juliet and Shakespeare does what he always does. He pulls you in.
The story spirals toward inevitable tragedy. Mercutio and Tybalt are dead, Romeo is banished, the secretly wed Juliet is being forced into marriage.
There is an arresting moment when Mr. O'Brien's Juliet is imprisoned in a length of cloth as all the people who control her life — her mother, her father, her nurse — cruelly tighten their control and hold her powerless. There is a raw touchstone there for every life and in that moment it's clear what R&J might have been. It's over in a flash.
The cast brings off an affecting death scene, and it does what it's supposed to do. Gender disappears. What matters is love and heartbreak and loss.
Crispin Freeman and Randy Reyes round out the ensemble capably, but none of the performances will be stamped in your memory.
Shakespeare's R&J, Playhouse in the Park Shelterhouse through Oct. 22. 421-3888.
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